Coconut Oil: Your New Best Friend

www.huffingtonpost.com - April 9th, 2013

Although coconut oil has gained controversy over the years, it is actually one of the healthiest fats in the world for you. Coconut oil is made from pressing the mature fruits of coconut palm trees. It's very popular in tropical parts of the world, like the Philippines, where there is incidentally less cases of heart disease and cancers than compared to the western world.

Coconut oil provides a great source of fuel, energy, and the highly-beneficial fatty acid, lauric acid. Coconut oil proves that not all saturated fats are "bad for you." Coconut oil is primarily made up of medium chain fatty acids (MCTs), which make it easy for your body to digest. Coconut oil is metabolized efficiently and converted into energy immediately, rather than getting stored as fat (the way butter or unhealthy oils can). Medium-chain fatty acids do not have a negative effect on blood cholesterol and help protect against heart disease. A new BFF (best friend forever) for sure.

Whether you are an athlete, dieter, or have trouble digesting dairy or fats, coconut oil might just become your new best friend -- it can be readily digested more than other oils.

Coconut oil is a significant plant source of lauric acid, a fatty acid recognized for its anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-microbial properties. It has been known to help speed up metabolism, clear acne, and is great for hair and nails. Doctors, like the esteemed fat and lipid scientist Dr. Mary Enig state that coconut oil improves the immune system's anti-inflammatory response, which helps us fight off disease.

Although a saturated fat, coconut oil contains no trans-fatty acids. Because it is naturally saturated, it can handle the heat of higher temperature cooking -- such as frying -- and won't burn or go rancid as easily. In effect, because coconut oil is saturated, it makes it very shelf-stable, which makes it a very healthy oil. Who knew saturated could mean good?

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The Myth of the 'Low-Fat' Diet, and Why Consuming Healthy Fats is Vital to Your Health

www.naturalnews.com - February 20th, 2013

Many people today still adhere to the misguided belief that nearly all fats are bad, and that the best way to stay slim and healthy is to cut fats, whenever possible, from your diet. On the contrary, fats are an absolutely vital component of any healthy diet as they aid in the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins and minerals, as well as feed the brain, heart, liver, lungs, bones, cells and nervous system the nutrients they need to function properly.

It is widely assumed that, because they are called "fats," these substances must contribute to obesity and obesity-related illnesses like heart disease that afflict millions of people today. This is true for trans fats and certain other unhealthy fats, of course, but there are all kinds of healthy fats as well, such as coconut oil, for instance, or even animal-based fats like grass-fed butter and naturally-produced lard that can actually promote good health.

At the recent World of Healthy Flavors Conference in Napa, Calif., the myth of the low-fat diet was tackled head on by several key figures in nutrition and epidemiology, including Walter Willett, chair of the nutrition department at the Harvard University School of Public Health (HSPH), and his colleague Dariush Mozaffarian. As part of their "Focus on Fat" panel, these experts encouraged their audience to abandon the low-fat mindset and learn about the benefits of consuming healthy fats.

Many low-fat food items contain high levels of processed salt and refined carbohydrates, they pointed out, which are added to low-fat foods to make up for the loss in taste and flavor that results from the artificial removal of fats. Both of these additives, which are devoid of their nutritional counterparts due to over-processing, are linked to numerous health problems, including obesity and heart disease.

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